I have no use for knowledge that has not been preceded by a sensation.
It is essential to persuade the soldier that those he is being urged to massacre are bandits who do not deserve to live; before killing other good, decent fellows like himself, his gun would fall from his hands.
It is the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing...
Through fear of resembling one another, through horror of having to submit, through uncertainty as well, through skepticism and complexity, there is a multitude of individual little beliefs for the triumph of strange little individuals.
The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers the most from its own limitations.
A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.
I have never produced anything good except by a long succession of slight efforts.
A desire for truth is by no means a need for certitude and it would be unwise to confuse one with the other.
Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.
There is no work of art that is without short cuts.
The wise man is he who constantly wonders afresh.
So long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity.
It is better to fail at your own life than to succeed at someone else’s.
Faith can move mountains; true: mountains of stupidity.
Without mysticism man can achieve nothing great.
An experience teaches only the good observer; but far from seeking a lesson in it, everyone looks for an argument in experience, and everyone interprets the conclusion in his own way.
To win ones joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.
Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars.
We no longer admit any other truth than that which is expedient; for there is no worse error than the truth that may weaken the arm that is fighting.
Sadness is a state of sin.